naturalized modernity and the resistance it evokes: sociological theory meets murakami haruki

ProtoSociologyAn International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research

Volume 32, 2015

Making and Un-Making Modern Japan

Edited by Ritu Vij

www.protosociology.de


Volume 32, 2015

ProtoSociology is an interdisciplinary journal which crosses the bor-ders of philosophy, social sciences, and their corresponding disciplines for more than two decades. Each issue concentrates on a specific topic taken from the current discussion to which scientists from different fields contribute the results of their research.

ProtoSociology is further a project that examines the nature of mind, language and social systems. In this context theoretical work has been done by investigating such theoretical concepts like interpretation and (social) action, globalization, the global world-system, social evolution, and the sociology of membership. Our purpose is to initiate and en-force basic research on relevant topics from different perspectives and traditions.

Editor: Gerhard Preyer

— www.protosociology.de —

} Pr

oto

Soci

olo

gy

Vol.

32:

Mak

ing

an

d U

n-M

akin

g M

od

ern

Jap

an |

Making and Un-Making Making and Un-Making Making and Un-Making Modern JapanModern JapanModern Japan

Ritu Vij (ed.)Ritu Vij (ed.)Ritu Vij (ed.)

Vol. 31: Language and Value

Vol. 30: Concepts – Contemporary and Historical Perspectives

Vol. 29: China‘s Modernization II

Vol. 28: China‘s Modernization I

© ProtoSociologyVolume 32/2015: Making and Un-Making Modern Japan

© 2015 Gerhard PreyerFrankfurt am Mainhttp://[email protected]

Erste Auflage / first published 2015ISSN 1611–1281

Bibliografische Information Der Deutschen BibliothekDie Deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Natio nal-bibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.ddb.de abrufbar.

Alle Rechte vorbehalten.Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Je de Ver-wertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zu stimmung der Zeitschirft und seines Herausgebers unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Über setzungen, Mikroverfil mungen und die Einspeisung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen.

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche BibliothekDie Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbiblio grafie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de.All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievalsystem, or trans-mitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of ProtoSocio logy.

© ProtoSociology Volume 32/2015: Making and Un-Making Modern Japan


Volume 32, 2015

Making and Un-Making Modern Japan Edited by Ritu Vij

Contents

Making and Un-Making Japanese Modernity: An Introduction ............ 5Ritu Vij

Part I The Vicissitudes of Japanese Modernity

Naturalized Modernity and the Resistance it Evokes: Sociological Theory Meets Murakami Haruki ........................................ 17Carl Cassegard

Ethno-politics in Contemporary Japan: The Mutual-Occlusion of Orientalism and Occidentalism .............................................................. 36Kinhide Mushakoji

Part II Citizenship, Migrants and Welfare in Modern Japan

A Dilemma in Modern Japan? Migrant Workers and the (Self-)Illusion of Homogeneity ......................................................... 59Hironori Onuki

Pretended Citizenship: Rewriting the Meaning of Il-/Legality ................ 83Reiko Shindo

What Japan Has Left Behind in the Course of Establishing a Welfare State .......................................................................................... 106Reiko Gotoh

Contents4


Part III Risk, Reciprocity, and Ethno-nationalism:

Reflections on the Fukushima Disaster

The Failed Nuclear Risk Governance: Reflections on the Boundary between Misfortune and Injustice in the case of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster ...................................................... 125Hiroyuki Tosa

Ganbarō Nippon: Tabunka Kyōsei and Human (In)Security Post 3–11 ................................ 150Giorgio Shani

Reciprocity: Nuclear Risk and Responsibility ......................................... 166Paul Dumouchel

On Contemporary Philosophy and Sociology

Civil Religion in Greece: A Study in the Theory of Multiple Modernities ...................................... 187Manussos Marangudakis

Underdetermination and Theory-Ladenness Against Impartiality. A Defence of Value-Free Science and Value-Laden Technology ............... 216Nicla Vassallo and M. Cristina Amoretti

The Challenge of Creativity: a Diagnosis of our Times .......................... 235Celso Sánchez Capdequí

Contributors .......................................................................................... 252

Impressum ............................................................................................. 253

Books on Demand ................................................................................. 254

On ProtoSociology ................................................................................. 255

Digital Volumes available ....................................................................... 256

Bookpublications of the Project .............................................................. 263


Naturalized Modernity and the Resistance it Evokes: Sociological Theory Meets Murakami Haruki

Carl Cassegard

AbstractShock has often been viewed as emblematic of modernity. Paradigmatic in this respect are the theories of Benjamin and Simmel. However, an equally important experience in modern societies is that of naturalization. This article attempts to investigate the implications of this experience for the theory of modernity through a discussion of contemporary Japanese literature, in particular the works of Murakami Haruki. I argue that just as the focus on shock enabled Benjamin and Simmel to illuminate the interconnectedness of a particular constellation of themes—the heightened consciousness or intellectualism of modernity, the destruction of aura or disenchantment, and the resulting spleen or Blasiertheit—so the focus on naturalization will contribute to an understanding of how themes such as the sense of complexity or ‘obscurity’, the phenomenon of ‘re-enchantment’ or ‘post-secularity’, and the increasing role of ‘non-social’ spheres in late modernity are interrelated.

What is the defining formative experience of modernity?1 Walter Benjamin provides a famous answer in Some Motifs in Baudelaire (1939), where he claims that the price for ‘the sensation of modernity’ is ‘the disintegration of the aura in the experience of shock’ (Benjamin 1997,154). He arrived at this formula through his interpretation of the shocks experienced in the Parisian crowd as a key experience in the poetry of Baudelaire, for whom these shocks were not simply menacing, but also a source of intoxication and inexhaustible novelty. At the time of the second empire, Benjamin writes, the Parisian flâneurs obtained ‘the unfailing remedy’ for their boredom in the crowd. ‘Anyone who is capable of being bored in a crowd is a blockhead. I repeat: a blockhead, and a contemptible one’, he quotes Constantin Guy, a painter and friend of Baudelaire (ibid. 1997, 37). Benjamin is not alone in elevating the shock-sensation to a central feature of modernity. The portrayal of modernity in virtually all classics of sociology—Simmel, Tönnies, Marx, Weber, and Durkheim—resonates with a pervasive feeling of upheaval and crisis, and with an unsettling awareness of contingency and insecurity.2 In a sense, shock has become emblematic of modernity.

1 The article summarizes and builds on arguments from Cassegard (2007). 2 Simmel takes the overabundance of stimuli and the intensified nerve-life of the city

as the starting point of his analysis of the modern metropolis. Tönnies’ notion of Ge-

Carl Cassegard18


However, since its inception modernity has also been haunted by another experience: the gradual subsiding of shock and the return of the sensation of the ‘natural’ or the everyday. Let me take another example of how the crowd can be experienced, this time from Tokyo in the late 1980s. In Okazaki Kyôko’s 1989 manga-collection I Love Boredom (Taikutsu ga daisuki) the figure of the flâneuse reappears in one of the bustling and trendy shopping areas of Shibuya. But the crowd, which Baudelaire portrayed as a source of shock and fascina-tion, is now the backdrop of solitary reveries.

To cast sidelong glances at the princes and princesses who stroll along the Shibuya streets, the piquant blue sky as I accidentally raise my eyes. That’s boredom for me […]. Doesn’t it make you feel cool and refreshed to walk around town like that—without dreading boredom? (Okazaki 1989, 142)

No shocking encounters interrupt the flâneuse in her meditations. Rather than offering the fascination of the new, the city has become the locus of pleasant boredom. What Okazaki seems to express is the return of the semblance of the natural. While no one ‘could be less inclined to view the big city as something ordinary, natural, acceptable’ than Baudelaire (Benjamin 1999, 386), this is exactly how Okazaki’s flâneuse perceives it.

I will refer to Baudelaire’s crowd as ‘shocking’ and to Okazaki’s as ‘natural-ized’. By nature I mean the appearance of taken-for-grantedness in a given order of things. A natural order appears to coincide with the concepts repre-senting it, in the sense that changes are perceived to occur within the limits of the known and established. Even when changes are unforeseen, they are felt to be in accord with the world. Shock is a disruption of this natural order that palpably reveals what Adorno calls the ‘non-identity’ of concept and object. Shock can be experienced as a painful destruction of certainty and trust, but also as a liberation from the mythic nature of taken-for-granted beliefs. As Marx and Engels put it in a rather optimistic formulation, the ‘everlasting uncertainty and agitation’ and the ‘constant disruption of all social relations’ in capitalism would force men ‘to face with sober senses that real conditions of their lives’ (Marx and Engels 1992, 6).

Naturalization occurs when things that were once shocking sink back into

sellschaft as a cold arena structured through conflict and competition, Durkheim’s pre-occupation with the threatening disintegration of social norms in modernity and Marx’ account of capitalism with its ‘everlasting uncertainty and agitation’ strongly suggest that shock is central to their understanding of modernity. Weber’s account of disen-chantment is echoed in Benjamin’s thoughts on the heightening of consciousness and the disintegration of the aura.

19Naturalized Modernity and the Resistance it Evokes


the familiar and take on the appearance of self-evidence. A city that was per-ceived in a truly naturalized way appears as an indifferent background, a natural environment as self-evident as mountains or rivers. Just as shock, naturalization is an ambivalent phenomenon. Environments that have ceased to shock also lose the power to arouse that sense of liberation that a glimpse of non-identity may bring. As I will demonstrate, a naturalized world harbours dilemmas of its own, which give rise to struggles and conflicts no less severe than those typical of an environment in which shocks are rampant, although the issues and lines of conflict are different.

Baudelaire and Okazaki serve well as departure points for analysing two modes of experiencing modernity—as a ‘shock modernity’ or as a ‘naturalized modernity’.3 Although shock and nature are surely present in all societies, I will suggest that just as the former model served Benjamin and other classical think-ers well in capturing what they saw as the most pressing and relevant features of modernity, the model of a naturalized modernity is becoming increasingly indispensible for grasping many of the pressing issues in today’s world. As will become evident in the course of my argument, my claim is not that we are see-ing a necessary historical evolution from one mode of experiencing modernity to another, but rather that both models are needed to grasp how modernity can be experienced today.

To a large extent this ‘naturalized modernity’ remains a terra incognita in social theory.4 By what concepts may we map it? What conflicts become cen-tral in it? By what strategies do people adapt to it, make the best out of it, or defy it? What implications does it have for the possibilities of critical theory if capitalism can no longer be counted on to shock people back to their ‘sober senses’? To find answers to these questions I will turn to the Japanese literary imagination of recent decades, in which this sense of the natural occupies a central position.5 While early modern Japanese writers powerfully conveyed

3 When I speak of modernity as ‘shocking’ or as ‘naturalized’, these terms are neither period-labels nor do they designate separate social structures. They designate ways of perceiving modernity—as shocking or as naturalized.

4 The closing of the gap between ‘nature’ and modernity has received much theoretical attention, but the tendency has been to describe it in terms of a ‘historization of nature’ rather than a ‘naturalization of history’ (see for instance Beck 1992, 81; Castells 1996, 477; Jameson 1991, ix). It is certainly correct that nature has become almost fully subjected to the dynamics of history, but to this picture we must add that nature can return on the level of experience.

5 Why do I use literature? Literature is of help to sociology through the concretizations it provides of how of experiences, dilemmas and strategies are interrelated. Generally, a literary work takes its point of departure from lived experience. The way the author responds to this experience typically includes an exploration of the dilemmas connected

Carl Cassegard20


a sense of modernity as shocking, Japan’s probably best known writer today, Murakami Haruki (1949–), stands out for his portrayal of modernity as natu-ralized. Using his works as a point of departure, I will use the sensation of the natural as a link that enables me to illuminate the interrelation between several features that have often been pointed out as characteristic of late mo-dernity in recent sociological theory—the sense of ‘complexity’ or ‘obscurity’, the ‘post-secularity’ or ‘re-enchantment’ or modernity, and the privatization and the redirection of libido into ‘non-social’ areas with resulting new modes of self-imposed isolation and loneliness. Together with the works of another contemporary writer, Murakami Ryû (1952–), his works will also enable me to shed light on the strategies used to deal with naturalization, the struggle to regain contact or togetherness and to restore a sense of the ‘real’ even at the price of the return of shock or pain.6

Modernity and Shock in Benjamin

Benjamin tells us that in modernity, people tend to protect themselves against the raw force of shock by developing a ‘heightened degree of consciousness’, which is used as what he, borrowing a term from Freud, calls a ‘protective shield’ against excessive external stimuli. This heightening of consciousness af-fects perception by undermining the possibilities of an assimilated experience

to it and, simultaneously, of strategies for overcoming them. As Jameson points out, the work functions as an ‘imaginary resolution’ of the ‘real contradiction’ posed by the lived experience (Jameson 1981, 77ff). It should be noted, however, that works of fiction only rarely present a finished solution in the sense of a compact ideological closure which shuts out contradictions from view. Instead, I approach the work as a revelation of these contradictions or at least of the subjective guise in which they are perceived.

6 For example, shock and the sense of crisis is predominant in writers such as Natsume Sôseki, Akutagawa Ryûnosuke, Tanizaki Jun’ichirô and Kawabata Yasunari, and still dominates the fiction of postwar writers like Abe Kôbô and Ôe Kenzaburô. A detailed analysis of Japanese authors can be found in Cassegard (2007). On shock and Japanese modernity, see also Harootunian (2000, 202–221). For texts in English introducing Mu-rakami Haruki and Murakami Ryû, see Aoki (1996), Murakami, F. (2002), Rubin (1999), Snyder (1996, 1999), Strecher (1998, 1999). There is, needless to say, no ambition on my part to claim any ‘representativity’ of Japanese literature for contemporary modernity. However, as ‘Paris’ did for Benjamin, so contemporary ‘Tokyo’ will here, provisionally, serve as an ‘exemplary’ instance that will help us to develop the theory of modernity. The aim is not to generalize, but to construct theoretical models that can serve as landmarks or points of reference that help us orient ourselves in social space, even if they are not representative of it.



(Erfahrung)—in which new impressions are integrated with memories, dreams and ideas into a whole—and replacing them with superficial sensations (Erleb-nisse) of fragmented moments. Benjamin treats this shift as equivalent to the disintegration of the ‘aura’, defined as what makes a thing such an a religious object or a human relationship appear unique and elevated above everyday life. Drained of aura, the world turns into a world of ‘spleen’, which is a state where external stimuli have lost their uniqueness and every sensation is merely a repetition of previous ones (Benjamin 1997, 111ff). Benjamin’s observations fit well with the concern in classical sociology—especially pronounced in the lineage going from Weber to critical theory—about the increasing prevalence in modern societies of instrumental rationality leading to a disenchantment of the world and a reification of the products of human action. Most closely, they echo Simmel’s well-known thesis that the ‘intensification of nerve-life’ in the modern metropolis brings about a dominance of the intellect over the emotions in spiritual life, something which in turn produces a blasé attitude (Blasiertheit), a state of bored indifference in which consciousness is fully de-veloped and nothing is left which might be perceived as shocking since every-thing is considered to be equal and exchangeable (Simmel 1964). According to Benjamin as well as Simmel, modernity is characterized by a particular kind of boredom that arises through an excess of stimuli and which is fuelled by shock rather than by its absence. The incessant shock-sensations and frantic attempts by the intellect to master them constitute modernity as what Benjamin calls a ‘hell’ or ‘continuous catastrophe’, characterized by a ‘dialectic of the new and the ever-same’, an endless production of novelties which is at the same time mired down in monotonous repetition, each new shock collapsing back into the same (Benjamin 1999, 842f; 1977, 231).

The central dilemma in the modernity portrayed by Benjamin revolves around the shock-sensation. The more people protect themselves from the raw force of shock through a heightened consciousness, the more their world will turn into a disenchanted desert in which things and people lose their aura. A typical conflict will arise between those who affirm the ascendancy of reason and heightened consciousness under the banner of enlightenment and the liberation from myth and superstition, and those who will attempt to reverse, slow down or overcome these processes driven by nostalgia for the lost aura and the ‘promise of happiness’ (to use Stendhal’s expression) which they perceive in tradition. The conflict can be visualized as a Greimasian semiotic rectangle (Figure 1).7 7 The Greimasian rectangle consists of a binary opposition, represented by the two ‘con-

traries’ S and –S, along with their simple negations, the two ‘sub-contraries’ -s and s.

Carl Cassegard22


Fig. 1: Contradictions in Benjamin’s modernity.

The rectangle clearly brings out the ambiguity of the aura as well as that of modern rationality. The aura seems to bring a promise of happiness but is also associated with mythical closure, with the deceptive semblance of a higher world elevated above and isolated from mundane social reality. Rationality may help us liberate ourselves from myth but also threatens us with disenchantment and a reified, shocking world ruled by cold, unfeeling efficiency. The ‘hellish’ aspect of modernity is produced when the worst elements of this brew are com-bined, when the shocks serve to perpetuate new myths, or—as Benjamin put it—when capitalism ceases to raise people’s awareness of its contradictions and instead produces ‘a new dream-filled sleep […] and, through it, a reactivation of mythic forces’ (Benjamin 1999, 391). Hovering above this hell is the utopian mirror image of a possible redemption that salvages the best of the aura as well as of rationality—the idea of a playful, rather than shocking, liberation from myth that will be possible without sacrificing happiness.

Benjamin adapted to the ‘hell’ of modernity through a strategy of waiting, of getting used to the dream world of capitalism as a first step in order to dispel it. Paradoxically, this very ‘hell’ contains a redemptive potential, expressed in

Combining the two contraries results in the ‘complex term’ (the ideal synthesis of S and –S at the top) while combining the two sub-contraries results in the ‘neutral term’ (the ideal synthesis of s and-s at the bottom) (See Jameson 1981, 166). The rectangle is useful for bringing out tensions or contradictions in a semantic field or discourse. The oppositions are thus not of an either/or-type, but rather indicate internal tensions that discourses in various ways try to handle or overcome.



the partial realizations of what he calls ‘play’ and ‘porosity’, a potential that becomes accessible through a ‘tactile’ getting used to the catastrophe. This was a strategy, not of subjecting the dream to an external critique, but of groping one’s way inside it in search of a dialectics of ‘awakening’. Just as for the Jews ‘every second was a small gate through which Messiah might enter’, so for Benjamin every piece of ‘rags or refuse’ was a potential ‘dialectical image’ which might trigger the sudden flash of recognition, the involuntary memory, which would help dispel the nightmare (Benjamin 1977, 167, 261; 1999, 13, 388ff).

Modernity as Nature

I have discussed how Benjamin interrelates a number of themes that are cen-tral to the classical sociological accounts of modernity through the notions of shock and the disintegration of the aura: the disenchantment of the world, the prevalence of calculating intellectualism and rationality, the blasé attitude and the atomization of social relations. Having shown how central the notion of shock is as a nodal point connecting these themes, it will now be easier to grasp the full extent of the theoretical implications of the absence of shock in naturalized modernity.

Murakami Haruki’s writings challenge the very premise on which Benjamin’s framework is founded, namely the equation of modernity with shock. As the cultural anthropologist Aoki Tamotsu remarks, cosiness and ‘pleasant senti-mentalism’ characterize modernity in Murakami’s novels (Aoki 1996). Even though his story lines do not lack dramatic and unexpected turns of event, the protagonists are rarely perturbed. The absence of shock even in the face of total disaster is well illustrated by the nightmarish plot of Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985, Sekai no owari to hâdoboirudo wandârando), in which the protagonist’s road towards his demise is gentle, rose-colored, and almost painted in an idyllic light despite the superficial kinship of this work to the genre of paranoid fiction. Not only has the prevalence of shock come to an end in his writings, the heightening of consciousness is, I will argue, replaced by a ‘lowering’ of consciousness, and the disenchantment of modernity by its re-enchantment.

Interestingly, the tranquillity of Murakami’s protagonists does not depend on a high degree of consciousness. There is no sign of the nervous attitude of being on one’s guard. If anything, they show a low level of awareness of their surroundings. They lack interest in much of contemporary reality, whose work-

Carl Cassegard24


ings they largely accept without the pretension of being able to look through them. ‘I wouldn’t know’ and ‘maybe so’ are their favourite expressions (cf. Murakami H. 1993, 357). The clearest idealization of this ‘low consciousness’ is perhaps found in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1994–5, Nejimakidori kuroni-kuru), whose protagonist—Okada Tôru—personifies the belief that as long as you stick with your gut feeling and do the little things, like vacuum cleaning, you contribute to the harmony of the world and ‘wind up its springs’. The difference between this kind of tranquillity and what Benjamin calls ‘spleen’ is that the former arises from an acceptance of incomprehensibility while the latter designates the state of mind in which the intellect has seemingly mas-tered its environment. While Benjamin depicts modernity as an age in which the fear of shock spurs the intellect towards an ever more watertight grip on its environment, Murakami’s protagonists appear to feel at home in the ‘new obscurity’ and ‘complexity’ that is said to be characteristic of late modernity (Habermas 1985). The incomprehensible is tolerated since it is no longer felt as threatening. Since the inexplicable has become commonplace, the protective shield of the intellect is less necessary.

Generally, Murakami’s stories have the calm of fairy tales in which fantastic events come forward as natural. As the hard, thing-like world governed by system-imperatives takes on the soft and gentle appearance of natural ecology, the process of ‘disenchantment’ which Weber saw as an inherent attribute of modernity and which Benjamin traced back to the destruction of the aura loses momentum. In line with the ‘post-secularism’ and ‘religious boom’ discussed in recent times, many of Murakami’s protagonists believe in fate. Others encoun-ter ghostlike or supernatural beings while still others able to talk with animals or travel to spiritual other worlds.8

This return of the fantastic in the mode of perception leads to a change in the character of reification, which can be seen in the way people appear in Mu-rakami’s fiction. His early works had a tendency to reduce people to objectified attributes, instead of referring to them by proper names. Thus for example the narrator’s girlfriend in A Wild Sheep Chase (1982, Hitsuji o meguru bôken) is casually reduced to ‘the girlfriend with the beautiful ears’. Although critics like Iwamoto Yoshio (1993) have complained that the characters of this novel are presented as depthless objects deprived of subjectivity, the reduction is drastic enough to be parodical. Like a small peephole in a wall, the reifying epithet never pretends to reveal everything. When she suddenly decides to leave the

8 For discussions of postsecularism and the return of religion, cf Bauman (1992, viii-xx-viii), Caputo (2001), Habermas (2000), Maffesoli (1996, 13f, 28, 38f ), McClure (1995), Shimazono (1996)



narrator, the act brings out how little either he or the reader knows about her. Since the epithet appears as a sign of what is untold, it turns her into a riddle rather than demystifying her. Like a gravestone, it refers to an absence in a manner that might be seen as respectful, as the expression of a wish not to sully a too painful memory. Unlike the categories of reified thinking, Murakami’s epithets do not subsume the other, but rather emphasize her unknowability and re-enchant what they keep hidden.

Non-sociality

I have presented the fading away of shock, the lowering of consciousness and the fusion of reification with re-enchantment as three aspects of the naturalized modernity in Murakami’s fiction. What makes this reversal at point after point of Benjamin’s framework possible? The key, I believe, can be found in the way social relations come forward in this fiction—these lack the hostile character characteristic of contractual relations (Gesellschaft), but neither can they be described in terms of the warmth or intimacy of community (Gemeinschaft). The waning of shock has not lead to any restored auratic human relationships, but rather to self-imposed isolation and solitude. The reason for this, I suggest, is that naturalization is made possible by privatization, the redirection of libidi-nal investments away from relations between people.9 The term privatization must be clearly distinguished from the so-called atomization of social relations. Atomization is the ‘objective’ process whereby system-imperatives (such as the labour market or bureaucratic regulations) splinter relations based on libidinal ties, while privatization is the ‘subjective’ withdrawal of libidinal investment from society. Thanks to privatization, atomization ceases to be experienced as painful and shocking. Naturalization, in other words, is not the result of a re-versal of atomization, but comes into being when atomization is complemented by privatization. Privatization does not mean that actual human interaction decreases, but that such interaction becomes less important as a source of gratification for individuals. It is a process whereby individuals get used to solitude, or—to be more precise—their instinctual needs and fundamental

9 Privatization is a phenomenon much discussed today, for instance by Robert D. Putnam in the case of increasing isolation and solitude in the US or by the Japanese sociologist Miyadai Shinji in relation to juvenile crime, school-dropout and hikikomori (Japanese adolescents or young adults who confine themselves to their room or apartment). Cf Miyadai & Fujii (2001, 2003), Putnam (2000).

Carl Cassegard26


impulses become channelled in such a way that their gratification is made less dependent on relations to other people.

A clear theoretical grasp of the process of privatization can be gained by turn-ing to Freud’s theory of the interiorization of libido in On Narcissism (1914) and The Ego and the Id (1923). This state bears a strong resemblance to the ‘pleasant’ loneliness of Murakami’s heroes. Their immunity against shock and indifference seem to make them prototypes of what Freud calls fully developed ‘characters’ with a high degree of interiorized libido. Two examples are the sud-den disappearance of the girlfriend in A Wild Sheep Chase and of the wife in The Wind-up Bird. The protagonists’ equanimity in both cases is all the more striking, since love between the sexes is the locus classicus of shock. In the fiction of older Japanese writers, like Abe or Kawabata, the loss of a beloved woman never fails to be shocking (Cassegard 2007). In Murakami, by contrast, the vulnerability necessary in order to be shocked is replaced by a masochistically tinged resignation which borders on indifference. Peace of mind is paid for by loneliness. ‘We no longer connect, but at least I don’t bother you and you don’t bother me’, as Putnam writes in a well-known work on contemporary loneliness and isolation (2000, 354).

While Benjamin or Simmel assume that the subject will react to the preva-lence of shock by becoming more conscious about the risks facing it in the dangerous world of human relations where it has to seek libidinal gratification, Freud’s theory, by contrast, suggests that the ego might react to loss by redi-recting libidinal investment from external relations to safer ‘non-social’ areas. Rather than arming itself with a heightened degree of consciousness when venturing into external relations, the subject will abandon them and turn to new areas of gratification inside the self. To this, one might add that today ‘non-social’ areas are increasingly opened up not only by the interiorization of libido, but also by the redirection of libido towards consumer objects. Com-mon to both is that they cushion the shocks that have become emblematic of modern human relationships. Both locate the object of desire outside social life, which is increasingly avoided as a source of gratification since it remains an arena of antagonism.

What are the new dilemmas that take form in naturalized modernity? Freud provides an important hint in his association of the interiorization of libido with melancholia and in suggesting that the clearest examples of such inte-riorization can be found in cases of traumatic loss that prevent the ego from investing any libido in external objects until recovery is achieved (Freud 1991, 245–269). If Benjamin could describe modernity as a hell of relentless shocks serving to perpetuate spleen, Murakami’s fiction is more akin to Hades, a mel-



ancholic world of the dead without either happiness or pain. While the prime cultural contradiction according to Benjamin’s model is the conflict between the aura and the predominance of the intellect, in Murakami’s modernity a new contradiction takes form which centres on the conflict between painless solitude and the struggle to maintain or regain human contact. Below I sche-matize this dilemma in the form of a semiotic square (Figure 2):

Fig. 2: Contradictions in Murakami’s modernity.

What can be seen here is that recovery, in the full sense of a restoration of the ability to live fully in the present without either loneliness or shock, plays the role of a wish-image or ideological mirage—the Greimasian ‘complex term’ in which the dilemma is to be ideally resolved. On the left-hand side we find the world of sociality, characterized by togetherness and shock. On the right side is non-sociality, in which freedom from shocks is bought at the price of loneli-ness. At the bottom, the experience of traumatic loss brings together shock and loneliness, the worst aspects of sociality and non-sociality.

It should be kept in mind that the ‘return to society’ celebrated in many works of fiction is not per se a solution to the problem of the solitude and lone-liness of non-social space. To ‘return’ to the social—or, to use Freud’s formula, to be able once again to libidinal investment in real people or things—means to make oneself vulnerable to shock. All too often, the attempt to ‘return to society’ in today’s world is frustrated by the unrelenting process of atomiza-tion, the individualization and colonization of human relations by ever more

Carl Cassegard28


powerful system-mechanisms. In such an environment, the vulnerability to shock is in itself an invitation to shock. Here the benjaminesque proposition holds true that lowering one’s guard will mean inviting pain. The absence of any neat solution to this contradiction tells us that we are here in contact with one of the defining and structural dilemmas of naturalized modernity.

Not only increasing isolation, but also the frantic vigour with which this isolation is denied, the desperation of the search for belonging, is characteristic of societies today, as evinced in the resurgence of nationalism, ethnic struggles and religious fundamentalism. The resurgence of ethnic and other struggles today also seem to be driven by a search for belonging and testify to the price for which the attempt to renew the aura in the realm of human relations is to be had: the return of shock and terror. This confirms the argument that privatization is a precondition for naturalization. If privatization is negated, the sensation of shock is likely to return. Naturalization thus does not mark any irreversible transition away from the ‘shock-modernity’ of Benjamin. Rather it opens up a corridor away from it, which might be traveled both ways. The decisive difference compared to Benjamin is that shock-modernity is no longer defining for modernity as such, but only one alternative.

Strategies of Waiting and Revolt

At least in his early fiction until the late 1980s, Murakami Haruki appears to stoically immerse himself in naturalized modernity. These early works all tend to portray protagonists who accept loneliness as a sad but sentimentally sweet fate. Later novels—beginning with Norwegian Wood (1987, Noruei no mori) and Dance dance dance (1988, Dansu dansu dansu)—depict protagonists who start to combat the trend towards privatization by committing themselves to other human beings. By their struggle, however, they find themselves having to deny naturalization as well, at least to a certain extent. Shock returns to their world, and even where mutual communication is achieved it tends to be painful, casting doubt on the success of their struggle. While the earlier novels present the clearest and most unblemished picture of a wholly naturalized and privatized world, the later novels show that Murakami is unwilling to affirm this world wholeheartedly.

This is especially evident in The Wind-up Bird, a typical work of Murakami’s later period. Although Okada Tôru is still a fundamentally solitary hero, his quest to retrieve his lost wife marks a significant shift in Murakami’s output.



For the first time a protagonist appears who refuses to let go of another person. What occupies Okada in much of the novel is the restoration of destroyed communication with his wife. In order to achieve this he has to ‘remember’ her name. The volte-face of Murakami’s previous nonchalance towards proper names is striking. While the reliance on epithets in earlier novels in an—al-beit parodical—way made their bearers exchangeable, the insistence on proper names in this work must be seen as an attempt to combat this exchangeability and attempt to hold fast her uniqueness or ‘aura’. The Wind-up Bird also brings out the difficulty of combating privatization. In this novel shock and pain return. The unpleasant conjugal quarrels and the violent hatred which Okada feels towards his enemy Wataya Noboru are only the reverse side of his new sense of responsibility. As the attempt to restore his marriage ends up in the affirmation of violence, this marks the failure of the dream to restore the aura without at the same time inviting shock.

Let me now turn to Murakami Ryû, a writer well known for his ‘sensational’ or ‘scandalous’ style who chooses a different strategy for dealing with the di-lemma of naturalized modernity. His works will be a useful prism for bringing into view another aspect of the discontent generated by naturalization, namely boredom.10 The boredom of naturalized modernity differs from what Simmel calls Blasiertheit or what Benjamin calls spleen, notions that both presuppose an environment in which shocks or stimuli are abundant. In contemporary Japanese literature and popular culture there are at least two other varieties of boredom. A fundamental gesture in much contemporary literature is that of accepting or even celebrating boredom. As mentioned, Okazaki Kyôko depicts her flânerie in the bustling Shibuya crowd as the epitome of pleasant boredom. Taikutsu ga daisuki, the title of her manga-collection, literally means ‘I love boredom’.

A second kind of boredom can be found in Murakami Ryû, who, as Shimada Masahiko has observed, ‘wages war on boredom’ (1998, 25). This war is itself nourished by a distinct kind of boredom, conveniently captured in Japanese by the word unzari—being ‘fed up’ or ‘bored to death’. Its source is resent-ment rather than indifference. It is well illustrated in a passage in Coin Locker Babies (1980, Koinrokkâ beibîzu), in which Anemone visits her older friend Sachiko in hospital. While Sachiko chatters away about parties, jewels and

10 Boredom as a new source of social discontent and even riots in contemporary societies is a phenomenon widely discussed. For instance, by Cohen & Taylor (1992), in relation to radical protest and revolt by Situationists like Vaneigem (1995), in relation to punk music by Marcus (1990), and in relation to Japanese subcultures and apocalyptic ‘new religions’ by Miyadai (1995).

Carl Cassegard30


lovers, Anemone looks out through the window at the Shinjuku skyscrapers, feeling pity and contempt for her friend. She has seen through her talk: ‘all Sa-chiko’s trips and lovers and ‘experiences’ amounted to the same thing: boredom’ (Murakami R. 1998, 129f ). Meanwhile, she daydreams about the destruction of Tokyo—a daydream which is recapitulated later in the novel when Kiku, her boyfriend, hallucinates in his hotel room that Tokyo extends endlessly in all directions—an enormous, dead city—and is gripped by an urge to level it with the ground. ‘Kill them all! Smash everything! Wipe this cesspool off the face of the earth!’ (ibid. 85). As these daydreams and hallucinations suggests, the feeling of ‘being fed up’ involves a longing for shock. Here it is easy to associate to Aum Shinrikyô, the sect responsible for the gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. What apocalyptic sects like Aum revolted against, according to the sociologist Miyadai Shinji, was not the dramatic upheavals of society, but on the contrary the lack of stimuli and appearance of standstill. It was the ennui of the ‘endless everyday’ they found unbearable (Miyadai 1995). It should be observed that this feeling of ‘being fed up’ is based on the presupposition that modernity no longer contains any surprises, novelties or shocks. The important problem is not how to deal with shock but how to deal with its absence.

What Slavoj Zizek calls the desire for the ‘real’, however painful it may be, becomes a recurring theme in the fiction of naturalized modernity, in both Murakami Haruki and Murakami Ryû. The philosopher Nakazawa Shin’ichi describes this as a desire to strip oneself of illusions and to ‘touch and caress naked reality with one’s bare hands’ (Nakazawa 1997, 11). Nakazawa points out that the desire to be in touch with ‘reality’ usually ends up in disappointment and frustration, in the vague feeling that: ‘This wasn’t what we really wanted’ (ibid. 14). This vague apprehension of the futility of ‘waging war’ on boredom can be sensed in Murakami Ryû. His Almost Transparent Blue (1976, Kagiri-naku tômei ni chikai burû) contains endless, repetitive descriptions of details calculated to be shocking and revolting, but ironically, by being repeated, the shocks become naturalized and sink back into harmless monotony. What his protagonists are nostalgic for is not premodernity, but the kind of modernity that Benjamin portrayed, when it was still possible to be shocked. His fiction demonstrates that when experience changes, the content of nostalgia changes too. It offers not a nostalgia for the aura but a nostalgia for its destruction, not an ideology of peace but one of shock and intensity.



Concluding Remarks

The perception of modernity as shocking or naturalized determines what di-lemmas are perceived as central. Benjamin depicts modernity as a ‘hell’ torn between the affirmation and negation of the experience of the disintegration of the aura in the shock-sensation. The dilemma of naturalized modernity, as glimpsed in Murakami Haruki and Murakami Ryû, is of a different kind, centering on boredom and loneliness. As mentioned, Murakami Ryû negates naturalization by ‘waging war on boredom’. Although his fiction abounds in seemingly shocking or nauseating episodes, these shocks are never simply given as part of experience itself, as the shocks characteristic of the modernity depict-ed by Benjamin, but are consciously produced in order to resist naturalization. In Murakami Haruki’s early works, there is a diametrically opposed strategy resembling Benjamin’s attitude of immersing oneself in the experience of the present. Just like Benjamin, he appears to waiting for another reality to take form, although his waiting is passive. If Murakami Ryû represents a basic revolt against naturalization, then Murakami Haruki’s early works represents a basic acceptance of naturalization that still seems to be waiting for something new. The former offers a grim foreboding that he will get mired down in nature through his pursuit of shock, the latter a mute expectation that new shocks may arise through the affirmation of nature.

Behind the shift towards a ‘naturalized modernity’ in recent Japanese litera-ture are larger processes that indicate a need to revise or supplement several classical sociological concepts. The society depicted in Murakami Haruki or Murakami Ryû fails to be captured by either of Tönnies’ classical concepts, Gemeinschaft or Gesellschaft, since it is neither an organic community nor a cold hostile arena designated for contractual arrangements and rivalry. One reason for this is the increasing significance of what I have called ‘non-social’ areas in contemporary societies, areas outside social life, which is increasingly avoided as a source of libidinal gratification since it remains an arena of antagonism. These ‘non-social’ spheres play a crucial role for the spread of naturalization, since they create a medium for bypassing shocks and conflicts.

The loneliness created by these spheres seems entirely different from what is found in Benjamin or Simmel. Their loneliness stemmed from the ‘protective shield’ of reserve which they felt forced to adopt. The typical protagonist in Murakami Haruki, by contrast, is not lonely because he wants to shut out oth-ers. On the contrary, one feels that he would like nothing better than to reach out to them, yet that he for some reason is unable to do so. His loneliness does not spring from the suppression of social impulses or socially oriented libido.

Carl Cassegard32


Rather, it is a nostalgia for such impulses or for such libido. This alters the meaning of loneliness itself. Loneliness of the former kind arises from the ‘pro-tective shield’ of heightened consciousness whereas the latter kind of loneliness arises from privatization. As I have argued above, the mechanisms behind this latter kind of loneliness are hard to explain using the framework made classical by Simmel and Benjamin and better understood using a Freudian framework in which the interiorization of libido is linked to melancholia and loss.

As I have argued above, an important background to the shocks discussed by Benjamin was the atomization of social relationships through system impera-tives inherent in capitalism or the modern bureaucratic state. The naturalized modernity in Murakami’s fiction becomes possible not because these processes have ended, but because they have become supplemented by privatization. As long as these underlying atomizing processes are in force, attempts to reject privatization are bound to invite renewed shocks. This suggests that combating system imperatives may be one of few viable ways forward for those who wish to break out of the cycle of shock and loneliness. Interestingly, since the 1990s both Murakami Haruki and Murakami Ryû have been groping for ways to re-new more political forms of commitment and engagement in society—the for-mer grappling in non-fiction works with the doomsday sect Aum Shinrikyô’s terror attack on the Tokyo subway and turning to Japan’s wartime history in his novels, and the latter becoming engaged in the problems of Japanese youth and participating in discussions about youth unemployment and new social movements (see Cassegard, 2007:203–207).

This raises the question of the implications of naturalization for the possibil-ity of a critical theory. To both Benjamin and Adorno, the sensation of shock was arguably an integral part of their critique of myth and ideology. To both, a mythical condition is a condition in which the historical construction or mediation of social life is forgotten, hidden behind a semblance of timeless-ness (Adorno 1994, 394). It is this mythical condition that is reproduced by what Adorno calls ‘identity-thinking’—thought that strives to repress or shut out the perception of non-identity and thus the awareness of the possibility that things can be otherwise, of qualitative change and history. To Benjamin, however, modernity is a state in which non-identity is not only repressed, but also at the same time clearly visible precisely in the sensation of shock whenever impulses, expectations or habitual ways of living are disrupted or frustrated. Inspired by surrealism and their method of the montage, he explicitly develops shock into a methodological tool aimed at shattering the conventional presup-positions of traditional hermeneutics. Similarly, Adorno’s negative dialectics seems to presuppose the continued presence of shocks, or at least the memory



of such shocks, since it gains its incisiveness from sensitivity to pain, not from any pre-established standpoint. The impulse to such dialectics, he claims, is found in experiences of pain and vertigo, experiences that give rise to an ap-prehension that ‘there must be something else’ or that ‘something is missing’ (etwas fehlt—a phrase from Brecht’s Mahagonny) and hence to a questioning of the status quo (Adorno 1994, 43, 202, 355ff).

What happens to this critique when society is viewed as a naturalized moder-nity? As I tried to indicate in my discussion of reifying epithets in Murakami Haruki, the perception of non-identity may not so much have disappeared as changed character in naturalized modernity. As these epithets bring out, the very absence of pain and shock may stimulate the awareness of non-identity. Even though his modernity takes the form of a seemingly painless world of stillness, such a landscape gives rise to feelings of discomfort. His works are pervaded by an ill-defined feeling of loss or the sense that something is miss-ing. His protagonists stoically accept the world in which they find themselves placed, but they do so with a feeling of disbelief, as if thinking: ‘This cannot be all there is’. A similar disbelief fuels Murakami Ryû’s revolt, where it is expressed as resentment and disgust precisely with the dull immobility of the world and its absence of shocks.

This is an important discovery, for this is precisely the Brechtian feeling that etwas fehlt, that something absolutely essential is missing, that Adorno saw as originating in the experience of pain. This means that the impulse for criti-cism in a naturalized modernity is no longer generated through shock or the disintegration of tradition. Instead, it is the very stability and semblance of identity in the world that arouses the feeling that ‘something is wrong’. Just as the disintegration of the aura is an ambivalent process, so the naturalization is ambivalent, encompassing destructive as well as liberating aspects. Naturaliza-tion does not mean that the possibilities for a critique of myth have vanished. Although such criticism can no longer take its point of departure in the sensa-tion of shock, the collision between this longing and the seeming immobility of the naturalized order opens up the possibility of a renewed critique. This points to the necessity of developing new forms of critique, but also guarantees that such critique has an important function to fulfil.

Carl Cassegard34


References

Adorno, T. W. 1994. Negative Dialektik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Aoki, T. 1996. Murakami Haruki and Contemporary Japan. In Contemporary Japan and

Popular Culture, edited by J.W. Treat, 265–274. Richmond: Curzon Press. Bauman, Z. 1992. Intimations of Postmodernity. London: Routledge. Beck, U. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: SAGE Publications. Benjamin, W. 1977. Illuminationen, Ausgewählte Schriften 1. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. —. 1997. Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. London: Verso. —. 1999. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard Uni-

versity Press. Caputo, J. D. 2001. On religion. London: Routledge. Cassegard, C. 2007. Shock and Naturalization in Contemporary Japanese Literature.

Folkestone: Global Oriental. Castells, M. 1996. The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell. Cohen, S. and Taylor, L. 1992. Escape Attempts: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to

Everyday Life. London: Routledge. Freud, S. 1991. On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis. London: Penguin

Books. Habermas, J. (1985) Die Neue Unübersichtlichkeit. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. —. 2003. The Future of Human Nature. Cambridge: Polity Press. Harootunian, H. D. 2000. Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community

in Interwar Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press Iwamoto, Y. 1993. A Voice from Postmodern Japan: Haruki Murakami. World Literature

Today, Spring: 295–300. Jameson, F. 1981. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca,

New York: Cornell University Press. —. 1991. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke Uni-

versity Press. Marcus, G. 1990. Lipstick Traces. A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press. Marx, K. and Engels, F. 1992. The Communist Manifesto. Oxford: Oxford University

Press. McClure, J. A. 1995. Postmodern / Post-secular: Contemporary Fiction and Spirituality.

Modern Fiction Studies 41(1): 141–63. Miyadai, S. 1995. Owarinaki nichijô o ikiro (Live the never-ending everyday). Tokyo:

Chikuma shobô. — and Fujii, S. 2001. ‘Datsushakaika’ to shônen hanzai (‘Desocialization’ and juvenile

crime). Tokyo: Tsukuru shuppan. — and Fujii, S. 2003. Kono yo kara kirei ni kietai (I want to leave this world completely).

Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha. Murakami, F. 2002. Murakami Haruki’s postmodern world. Japan Forum 14(1): 127–41. Murakami, H. 1985. Hitsuji o meguru bôken (A Wild Sheep Chase), vol. I-II. Tokyo:

Kôdansha bunko. —. 1993. Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World. New York: Vintage.



—. 1997. Nejimakidori kuronikuru (The Wind-up Bird Chronicle), vol. I-III. Tokyo: Shinchô bunko.

Murakami, R. 1978. Kagirinaku tômei ni chikai burû (Almost Transparent Blue). Tokyo: Kôdansha bunko.

—. 1998. Coin Locker Babies. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Nakazawa, S. 1997. Riaru de aru koto (Being real). Tokyo: Gentôsha bunko. Okazaki, K. 1987. Taikutsu ga daisuki (I Love Boredom). Tokyo: Kawadeshobô shinsha. Putnam, R. D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.

New York: Touchstone. Rubin, J. 1999. Murakami Haruki’s Two Poor Aunts Tell Everything They Know about

Sheep, Wells, Unicorns, Proust, Elephants, and Magpies. In Ôe and Beyond: Fic-tion in Contemporary Japan, edited by S. Snyder and P. Gabriel, 177–98. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Shimada, M. 1998. Nihon bungaku no Sumerujakofu—Murakami Ryû (The Smerd-jakov of Japanese Literature—Murakami Ryû). In Gunzô Nihon no sakka 29: Mu-rakami Ryû, 21–25. Tokyo: Shôgakukan.

Shimazono, S. 1996. Aspects of the Rebirth of Religion. In Religions in Japanese Culture: Where Living Traditions Meet a Changing World, edited by T. Noriyoshi and D. Reid, 171–83. Tokyo: Kodansha International.

Simmel, G. 1964. The Metropolis and Mental Life. In The Sociology of Georg Simmel, edited by K. H. Wolff, 409–26. London: The Free Press.

Snyder, S. 1996. “Two Murakamis and Marcel Proust: Memory as Form in Contempo-rary Japanese Fiction.” In In Pursuit of Contemporary East Asian Culture, edited by X. Tang and S. Snyder, 69–84. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

—. 1999. Extreme Imagination: The Fiction of Murakami Ryû. In Ôe and Beyond: Fic-tion in Contemporary Japan, edited by S. Snyder and P. Gabriel, 199–218. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Strecher, M. 1998. “Beyond ‘Pure’ Literature: Mimesis, Formula, and the Postmodern in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki.” The Journal of Asian Studies 57(2): 354–78.

—. 1999. Magical Realism and the Search for Identity in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki. Journal of Japanese Studies 25(2): 263–98.

Vaneigem, R. 2001. The Revolution of Everyday Life. London: Rebel Press.

Autor252


Contributors

Maria Cristina Amoretti, Dr., Department of Philosophy, Epistemological Sec-tion, University of Genoa, Genova, Italy.

Celso Sánchez Capdequí, Professor, Department of Sociology, Universidad Pública de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain.

Carl Cassegard, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Science Work, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Paul Dumochel, Professor, Département of Philosophy, University of Québec, Montréal, Canada, Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences Uni-versity Ritsumeikan, Kyoto, Japan.

Reiko Gotoh, Professor, Division of Theories in Economics and Statistics, Hitotsubashi University Tokio, Tokio, Japan.

Manussos Marangudakis, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Uni-versity of the Aegean, Greece; Visiting Fellow, Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University, United Sttes.

Kinhide Mushakoji, Professor, Centre for Asia Pacific Partnership, Osaka Uni-versity of Economics and Law, Osaka, Japan.

Hironori Ohnuki, Dr., School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia.

Ritu Vij, Senior Lecturer, The Institute of Conflict, Transition, and Peace, Re-search Politics & International Relations, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom.

Giorgio Shani, Associate Professor, Director of Rotary Peace Center , Politics and International Relations, International Christian University, Osawa, Tokyo, Japan.

Reiko Shindo, Dr., Teaching Fellow, Politics and International Studies, The University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.

Hiroyuki Tosa, Professor, Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.

Nicla Vassallo, Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Genova, Genova, Italy.

Impressum

ProtoSociology: An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research issn 1611–1281

Editor: Gerhard PreyerGoethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Institute of Sociology, Dep. of Social SciencesEditorial staff: Georg PeterProject Multiple Modernities: Reuß-Markus Krauße (East-Asia Representa-tive)Layout and digital publication: Georg PeterEditorial office: ProtoSociology, Stephan-Heise-Str. 56, 60488 Frankfurt am Main, Germany, phone: (049)069–769461, Email: [email protected], [email protected]———————————————Die Zeitschrift soll 1/2jährlich erscheinen. Die Anzahl der jährlich erschei nen den Hefte und Sonderhefte bleibt jedoch vorbehalten.

Copyright: Die in dieser Zeitschrift veröffentlichten Beiträge sind urheber rechtlich ge schützt. Alle Rechte sind vorbehalten. Übersetzungen, Nach druck, Verviel fäl-tigung auf foto mecha nischem oder ähn lichem Weg oder im Mag net ton verfahren, Wieder ga be durch Vortrag, Funk- und Fernsehsen dungen sowie Speicherung in Daten verarbei tungs anlagen, auch auszugs weise, sind nur mit Geneh mi gung des Herausgebers mög lich. Für einge reich te Beiträge wird keine Haftung über nom-men. Weitere Publikati ons rechte von Artikeln blei ben vorbehalten. Zweit publi ka-tionen seitens des Autors wer den eingeräumt. Bei einer Zweit publikation ist das Heft (Nummer, Titel, Erschei nungsjahr) der PROTO SOCIOLO GY zu zitieren. Für unaufgefordert eingesandte Manus kripte wird keine Haftung über nom men. Gerichtsstand ist Frankfurt am Main.

Copyright: All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, stored or trans mitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. Additional publications of the articles are reserved. The authors retain the personal right to re-use their own articles. Authorization to photocopy items for inter nal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients is garanted by PROTO SOCIOLOGY, provided that the base fee is paid directly to VG Wort, Goethestr. 49, 80336 München RFA.The publisher accepts no responsibility for submitted manuscripts.

253Published Volumes


On ProtoSociology

Protosociology plays an important role among philosophy journals with connected contributions on important and breaking topics—such the nature and special fea-tures of collective cognitive states—that do not receive such generous attention in other journals. It isworth serious consideration for inclusion in a library‘s philosophy collection.

Margaret Gilbert, Storrs (USA)

The journal Protosociology has become an important forum for discussion in the philosophy of social science and of sociality and, more broadly, for theoretical discus-sion in social science. It is especially interesting and important that such new fields as social metaphysics and social epistemology as well as research related to collective intentionality and its applications have acquired a prominent place in the agenda of Protosociology.

Raimo Tuomela

Protosociology occupies an important position in the European intellectual scene, bridging philosophy, economics, sociology and related disciplines. Its volumes on rationality bring together concerns in all these topics, and present an important challenge to the cognitive sciences.

Donald Davidson, Berkeley (USA)

Protosociology publishes original papers of great interest that deal with fun da mental issues in the human and social science. No academic library is com plete without it.

Nicholas Rescher, Pittsburgh (USA)

Protosociology has been remarkably successful in publishing interesting work from different tradition and different disciplines and, as the title signals, in giving that work a new, eye-catching slant.

Philipp Pettit, Canberra, Australia

Protosociology is a truly premier interdisciplinary journal that publishes articles and reviews on timely topics written by and for a wide range of inter national scholars. The recent volumes on rationality are remarkable for their breadth and depth. Protosociology would be a great addition to any library.

Roger Gibson, St. Louis (USA

Published Volumes254



Books on Demand

In principle ProtoSociology is an electronic journal. But with our new Books on Demand service we are starting to offer volumes worldwide as books: High quality printing and binding on special paper with a professional layout.

The books can be ordered directly through around 1000 shops worldwide.

Vol 32, 2015Making and Unmaking Modern Japan, ISBN 9783837077780, 32.–€

Vol. 31, 2014 Language and Value, ISBN 9783738622478, 32.-€

Vol. 30, 2013 Concepts – Contemporary and Historical Perspectives, ISBN 9783738641653, 32.-€

Vol. 29, 2012 China’s Modernization II, ISBN 9783738641646, 32.-€,

Vol. 28, 2011 China’s Modernization I, ISBN 9783734761270, 32.-€,


Volume 31, 2014

Language and Value Edited by Yi Jiang and Ernie Lepore Contents

18.- Euro. Order and download:http://www.protosociology.de

Or Book on Demand, ISBN 9783738622478, 32,– Euro,

IntroductionErnest Lepore and Yi Jiang

I. Semantics and Ontology

The Relation of Language to Value Jiang Yi

Refutation of the Semantic Argument against DescriptivismChen Bo

Semantics for Nominalists Samuel Cumming

Semantic Minimalism and Presupposi-tion Adam Sennet

Compositionality and UnderstandingFei YuGuo

Values Reduced to Facts: Naturalism with-out Fallacy Zhu Zhifang

II. Word Meaning, Metapher, and Truth

Philosophical Investigations into Figura-tive Speech Metaphor and IronyErnie Lepore and Matthew Stone

Norms of Word Meaning LitigationPeter Ludlow

The Inconsistency of the Identity Thesis Christopher Hom and Robert May Describing I-junctionPaul M. Pietroski

Predicates of Taste and Relativism about TruthBarry C. Smith

Mood, Force and Truth William B. Starr

A Semiotic Understanding of Thick TermAihua Wang

III. Features of China’s Analytical Philosophy

An Echo of the Classical Analytic Philoso-phy of Language from China: the Post-analytic Philosophy of LanguageGuanlian Qian

The Chinese Language and the Value of Truth-seeking: Universality of Metaphysi-cal Thought and Pre-Qin Mingjia’s Philoso-phy of LanguageLimin Liu

Mthat and Metaphor of Love in Classical Chinese PoetryYing Zhang


© ProtoSociologyVolume 32/2015: Language and Value


Volume 30, 2013

Concepts—Contemporary and Historical Perspectives Contents

Concepts in the Brain: Neuroscience, Embodiment, and Categorization Joseph B. McCaffrey

Recalling History: Descartes, Hume, Reid, Kant, Ockham

Conceptual Distinctions and the Concept of Substance in Descartes Alan Nelson

The Concept of Body in Hume’s Treatise Miren Boehm

Conceiving without Concepts: Reid vs. The Way of Ideas Lewis Powell

Why the “Concept” of Spaces is not a Concept for Kant Thomas Vinci

Ockham on Concepts of Beings Sonja Schierbaum

On Contemporary Philosophy

Paradoxes in Philosophy and SociologyNote on Zeno’s DichotomyI. M. R. Pinheiro

The Epigenic Paradox within Social Devel-opment Robert Kowalski

Concepts, Sense, and Ontology

What Happened to the Sense of a Concept-Word? Carlo Penco

Sense, Mentalese, and Ontology Jacob Beck

Concepts Within the Model of Triangula-tionMaria Cristina Amoretti

A Critique of David Chalmers’ and Frank Jackson’s Account of Concepts Ingo Brigandt

The Influence of Language on Conceptual-ization: Three Views Agustin Vicente, Fernando Martinez-Manrique

Representations, Contents, and Brain

Views of Concepts and of Philosophy of Mind—from Representationalism to Contextualism Sofia Miguens

Changes in View: Concepts in Experience Richard Manning

Concepts and Fat Plants: Non-Classical Categories, Typicality Effects, Ecological Constraints Marcello Frixione




© ProtoSociology Volume 32/2015: Language and Value


Volume 29, 2012

China’s Modernization II – Edited by Georg Peter and Reuß-Markus Krauße Contents

Neoliberalism and the Changes in East Asian Welfare and Education

Business Opportunities and Philanthropic Initiatives: Private Entrepreneurs, Welfare Provision and the Prospects for Social Change in ChinaBeatriz Carrillo Garcia

Time, Politics and Homelessness in Con-temporary JapanRitu Vij

Educational Modernisation Across the Tai-wan Straits: Pedagogical Transformation in Primary School Moral EducationTextbooks in the PRC and TaiwanDavid C. Schak

Is China Saving Global Capitalism from the Global Crisis?Ho-fung Hung


International Development, Paradox and PhronesisRobert Kowalski

Précis of “The World in the Head”Robert Cummins

Communication, Cooperation and ConflictSteffen Borge

On Contempary Theory of Modernisa-tion

Multiple Modernities and the Theory of Indeterminacy—On the Development and Theoretical Foundations of the Historical Sociology of Shmuel N. EisenstadtManussos Marangudakis

Changing China: Dealing with Diver-sity

Dissent of China’s Public Intellectuals in the Post-Mao EraMerle Goldman

Modernization of Law in China—its Meaning, Achievements, Obstacles and ProspectQingbo Zhang

China’s State in the Trenches: A Gramscian Analysis of Civil Society and Rights-Based LitigationScott Wilson

Manufacturing Dissent: Domestic and International Ramifications of China’s Summer of Labor UnrestFrancis Schortgen and Shalendra Sharma


or Book on Demand, ISBN 9783738641646, 32,– Euro,




Volume 28, 2011

China’s Modernization I Contents

Changing China: Dealing with Diver-sity

Class, Citizenship and Individualization in China’s Modernization Björn Alpermann

Chinese Nation-Building as, Instead of, and Before Globalization Andrew Kipnis

Principles for Cosmopolitan Societies: Values for Cosmopolitan Places John R. Gibbins

On Modernization: Law, Business, and Economy in China

Modernizing Chinese Law: The Protection of Private Property in ChinaSanzhu Zhu

Chinese Organizations as Groups of People—Towards a Chinese Business Administration Peter J. Peverelli

Income Gaps in Economic Development: Differences among Regions, Occupational Groups and Ethnic Groups Ma Rong

Thinking Differentiations: Chinese Origin and the Western Culture

Signs and Wonders: Christianity and Hy-brid Modernity in China Richard Madsen

Confucianism, Puritanism, and the Tran-scendental: China and AmericaThorsten Botz-Bornstein

China and the Town Square Test Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom

Metaphor, Poetry and Cultural Implicature ..Ying Zhang


Can Science Change our Notion of Exis-tence? Jody Azzouni

The Epistemological Significance of Prac-tices Alan Millar

On Cappelen and Hawthrone’s “Relativism and Monadic Truth”J. Adam Carter






Volume 27, 2011

Modernization in Times of Globalization II Contents

The Problem of Social Order in a Disordered Time

From Order to Violence: Modernization ReconfiguredDavid E. Apter

Institutional Transfer and Varieties of Capi-talism in Transnational SocietiesCarlos H. Waisman

Media Distortion—A Phenomenological Inquiry Into the Relation between News and Public OpinionLouis Kontos

Labor Migration in Israel: The Creation of a Non-free WorkforceRebeca Raijman and Adriana Kemp


Deference and the Use TheoryMichael Devitt

Constitution and Composition: Three Ap-proaches to their RelationSimon J. Evnine

New Theoretical Approaches

Religion, International Relations and Trans-disciplinarityRoland Robertson

Modernization, Rationalization and Glo-balizationRaymond Boudon

Modernity Confronts Capitalism: From a Moral Framework to a Countercultural Critique to a Human-Centered Political EconomyIno Rossi

Three Dimensions of Subjective Globaliza-tionManfred B. Steger and Paul James

Transnational Diasporas: A New Era or a New Myth?Eliezer Ben-Rafael

The Discursive Politics of Modernization: Catachresis and MaterializationTerrell Carver





Volume 26, 2009

Modernization in Times of Globalization I

Contents

Case Studies

Spatial Struggles: State Disenchantment and Popular Re-appropriation of Space in Rural Southeast ChinaMayfair Mei-hui Yang

Re-Engineering the “Chinese Soul” in Shanghai?Aihwa Ong

Territorial Stigmatization in the Age of Advanced MarginalityLoïc Wacquant

Quixote, Bond, Rambo: Cultural Icons of Hegemonic DeclineAlbert J. Bergesen

On Contemporary Philosophy and Sociology

Implicature, Appropriateness and War-ranted AssertabilityRon Wilburn

Is the Whole More than the Sum of its Parts? Matthias Thiemann

Multiple Modernization

Contemporary Globalization, New Inter-civilizational Visions and Hege monies: Transformation of Nation-States Shmuel N. Eisenstadt

Multipolarity means thinking plural: Mo-dernities Jan Nederveen Pieterse

Postmodernism and GlobalizationOmar Lizardo and Michael Strand

Latin American Modernities: Global, Trans-national, Multiple, Open-Ended Luis Roniger

Institutions, Modernity, and Moderniza-tionFei-Ling Wang

The Structure of the Global Legal System

Modern Society and Global Legal System as Normative Order of Primary and Sec-ondary Social SystemsWerner Krawietz

International Justice and the Basic Needs PrincipleDavid Copp

270 pages, 18.- Euro. Order http://www.protosociology.de



ProtoSociology Digital Volumes available

Vol. 31 Language and ValueVol. 30 Concepts—Contemporary and Historical Perspectives

Vol. 29 China’s Modernization II

Vol. 28 China’s Modernization I

Vol. 27 Modernization in Times of Globalization II

Vol. 26 Modernization in Times of Globalization I

Vol. 25 Philosophy of Mathematics— Set Theory, Measuring Theories, and Nominalism

Vol. 24 Shmuel N. Eisenstadt: Multiple Modernities— A Paradigma of Cultural and Social Evolution

Vol. 23 Facts, Slingshots and Anti-Representationalism On Stephen Neale’s Facing Facts

Vol. 22 Compositionality, Concepts and Representations II: New Problems in Cognitive Science

Vol. 21 Compositionality, Concepts and Representations I: New Problems in Cognitive Science

Vol. 20 World-SystemAnalysis: Contemporary Research and Directions

Vol. 18/19 Understanding the Social II: ThePhilosophy of Sociality

Vol. 17 Semantic Theory and Reported Speech

Vol. 16 Understanding the Social I: New Perspectives from Epistemology

Vol. 15 On a Sociology of Borderlines: Social Process in Time of Globalization

Vol. 14 Folk Psychology, Mental Concepts and the Ascription of Attitudes

Vol. 13 Reasoning and Argumentation

Vol. 12 After the Received View—Developments in the Theory of Science

Vol. 11 Cognitive Semantics II—Externalism in Debate (free download!)

Vol. 10 Cognitive Semantics I—Conceptions of Meaning

Vol. 8/9 Rationality II &III (double volume)

Order and download directly from our hompepage:www.protosociology.de

18.- Euro eachFor subscription or additional questional: [email protected]

ProtoSociology. Editor: Gerhard Preyer, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main FB 3: Department of Social Sciences. Editorial staff: Georg Peter.

Editorial office: Stephan-Heise-Str. 56, D–60488 Frankfurt am Main

262


SociologyVarieties of Multiple Modernities: New Re-search Design, Gerhard Preyer and Michael Sussman (eds.). Brill Publisher, 2015.

Hybridisierung Chinas—Modernisierung und Mitgliedschaftsordnung der chine-sischen Gesellschaft. Reuß-Markus Krauße. Spinger/VS Verlag, 2015.

Chinas Power-Tuning: Modernisierung des Reichs der Mitte, Gerhard Preyer, Reuß-Markus Krauße, Spinger/VS Verlag 2013.

Rolle, Status, Erwartungen und soziale Gruppe. Gerhard Preyer. Spinger/VS Verlag. 2012.

Selbstbeobachtung der modernen Gesell-schaft und die neuen Grenzen des Sozi-alen. Georg Peter und Reuß Markus Krauße (Hrsg.). Spinger/VS Verlag. 2012

Zur Aktualität von Shmuel N. Eisenstadt—Eine Einleitung in sein Werk. Gerhard Preyer. VS Verlag 2011.

Max Webers Religionssoziologie. Eine Neubewertung. Gerhard Preyer. Humanities Online 2010.

Gesellschaft im Umbruch II—Jenseits von National- und Wohlfahrtsstaat. Gerhard Preyer. Verlag Humanities Online 2009.

In China erfolgreich sein—Kulturunterschie-de erkennen und überbrücken. Gerhard Preyer, Reuß-Markus Krauße. Gabler Verlag 2009.

Borderlines in a Globalized World. New Perspectives in a Sociology of the World System. Gerhard Preyer, Mathias Bös (eds.). Kluwer 2002.

PhilosophyPrereflective Consciousness—Sartre and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind, Sofia Miguens, Clara Morando, Gerhard Preyer (eds.). Routledge 2015.

From Individual to Collective Intentional-ity—New Essays, edited by Sara Rachel Chant, Frank Hindriks, and Gerhard Preyer. Oxford University Press 2013.

Consciousness and Subjectivity. Sofia Miguens, Gerhard Preyer (eds.). Ontos Pub-lishers 2012.

Triangulation—From an Epistemological Point of View. Maria Cristina Amoretti, Ger-hard Preyer (eds.). Ontos Publishers 2011.

Intention and Practical Thought. Gerhard Preyer. Humanities Online 2011.

Contextualism in Philosophy. Knowledge, Meaning an Truth. Gerhard Preyer, Georg Peter (eds.). Oxford University Press 2005.

Context-Sensitivity and Semantic Mini-malism—New Essays on Semantics and Pragmatics. Gerhard Preyer and Georg Peter (eds.). Oxford University Press 2007.

Concepts of Meaning. Framing an Integrated Theory of Linguistic Behavior. Gerhard Preyer, Georg Peter, Maria Ulkan (eds.). Klu-wer 2003. Rep. Springer Verlag, Wien.

Logical Form and Language. Gerhard Preyer, Georg Peter (eds.). Oxford University Press 2002.

Donald Davidson’s Philosophy. From Radi-cal Interpretation to Radical Contextualism. Gerhard Preyer. Verlag Humanities Online, dt. 2001, engl. 2006.

The Contextualization of Ratio nality. Ger-hard Preyer, Georg Peter (eds.). Mentis 2000.

Bookpublications of the Project (extract)

263


naturalized modernity and the resistance it evokes: sociological theory meets murakami haruki

Documents